Quality assessment of high performance concrete using digitized image elements

The quality of high performance concrete largely depends on water cement ratio, porosity, material composition and mix methods. The uniformity of color, texture and compressive strengths are quality indicators commonly used to assess the overall characteristics of concrete mixes. The homogeneity and share of coarse aggregates play a key role in concrete quality and must be analyzed in a microscopic point of view. This research studies the quality of high performance concrete by taking drilled cores in both horizontal and vertical directions from a 1.0 $m^3$ specimen. The coarse aggregate, expressed in digitized $100{\times}116$ dpi resolution images are processed based on brightness in colors through commercial software converted into text files. With the image converting to text format, the share of coarse aggregate is quantified leading to a satisfactory assessment of homogeneity - a quality index of high performance concrete. The compressive strengths of concrete and the shares of coarse aggregate of the samples are also compared in this research study to illustrate its correlation in concrete quality. It is concluded that a higher homogeneity of aggregate exists in the vertical plane than that of the horizontal planes of the high performance concrete. In addition, the concrete specimen showing denser particle packing has relatively higher compressive strengths. The research methodology provides an easy-to-use, direct measurement of high performance concrete when conducting quality assessment in the construction site.